Constantinople as it would look by air. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bizansist_touchup.jpg What New York City was in the 1900s, London was in the 1800s, Constantinople was in the 600s, and so forth, back to Jericho in 7000 BC.

They were the largest cities in the world, and arguably the epicenters of human civilization.

These cities led mankind to new heights of culture and commerce—though in the end each of them was surpassed and some of them destroyed.

Historians Tertius Chandler, Gerald Fox, and George Modelski identified the largest cities throughout history through painstaking study of household data, agricultural commerce, church records, fortification sizes, food distribution, loss of life in a disaster, and more. We have parsed their work in the following slides.

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Jericho was the biggest city in the world in 7000 BC with 2,000 citizens

Jericho may be the oldest continually occupied spot in the world, with settlements dating to 9000 BC.

The city, nestled between the Dead Sea and Mt. Nebo, had natural irrigation from the Jordan River and the best known oasis in the region. The springs allowed residents to grow the highly lucrative opobalsamum plant, which produced the most expensive oil in the ancient world.

Uruk took the lead in 3500 BC with 4,000 citizens

Uruk is famous as the capital city in the epic of Gilgamesh; also thought to be the Biblical city of Erech, built by King Nimrod.

The domestication of grain and its close proximity to the Euphrates River allowed Uruk's harvest to swell, leading to trade, advancements in writing, and specialized crafts.

The city declined around 2000 BC due to regional struggles and was finally abandoned around the time of the Islamic conquest.

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Mari took the lead in 2400 BC with 50,000 citizens

A depiction of the ancient city of Mari, located in present-day Syriawikipedia commons

Mari was the robust trade capital of Mesopotamia, central in moving stone, timber, agricultural goods and pottery throughout the region.

The city was home first to the Sumerite kings, then the Amorite kings, one of which built a massive 300-room palace.

Mari was sacked in 1759 BC by Hammurabi of Babylon and then abandoned.

In the 1930s a French archaeologist discovered 25,000 tablets written in an extinct language called Akkadian. Most were municipal documents, economic reports and census rolls—a third were personal letters. The find changed our understanding of the ancient Near East.

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Ur took the lead in 2100 BC with 100,000 citizens

Ur was the most important port on the Persian Gulf. It was also a rich city, which held huge amounts of luxury items crafted from precious metals and semi-precious stones imported from throughout the known world.

Because of possible drought, or changing river patterns, Ur was no longer inhabited after 500 BC.

It remained a holy site, however, and a burial site for people around the region. When archaeologists began sincere excavations in the mid 1850s, they discovered an immense necropolis, or city of the dead.

Yinxu took the lead in 1300 BC with 120,000 citizens

An old village on the Huan River, Yinxu was reborn as the capital of the Shang Dynasty. It would be abandoned with the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty.

The city is a major archaeological site for its immense deposits of Oracle Bones, which contain the earliest form of Chinese writing. Pieces of ox bone and tortoise shell were inscribed using a bronze pin, heated until the bone cracked and then presented for divination. Later when the tradition changed to ink and brush, entire genealogies and city histories were written on the fragments and deposited in central pits.

Carthage took the lead in 300 BC with 100,000 citizens

Carthage is said to have been the greatest city in the world for a short time span before getting reduced to ash by the Romans in 146 BC.

Because all records of Carthaginian life were destroyed by the Romans in such a swift and thorough rage, little is known of the city through its former residents.

It wasn't even until 1985 that a formal peace treaty between the two cities was signed, finally ending the 2,100-year-old latent conflict.

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Rome took the lead in 200 AD with 1,200,000 citizens

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0172495/

From its humble roots as a small Italian village 1,100 years earlier, Rome in the second century AD was enjoying the pinnacle of its influence and achievement.

At this time, the city was a military dictatorship under Septimius Severus; A move the people welcomed to correct the corruption instilled by Emperor Commodus. Recall Joaquin Phoenix in "Gladiator" —that Commodus.

Rome reached this size because it could draw food and taxes from most of Europe and the Mediterranean, but it proved an untenable position. By 273 AD, Rome had fewer than 500,000 inhabitants and the Dark Ages were looming on the horizon.

Beijing took the lead in 1,500 AD with 1,000,000 citizens

To feed its growing population and vast number of troops in 1400 AD, Beijing officials constructed the Jingtong storehouses to house grain it received as tax from the region.

The practice helped control prices and prevent inflation until the city grew to the largest in the world and the demand outgrew supply.

The population was then forced to consume the regional forests for housing and firewood leaving only coal, mined from the Western Hills, for heat and fuel. The resulting pollution changed the ecological makeup of the entire region.